


The Heartless Boy

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Series: The Heartless Boy [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8417674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: Re-attempt/Continuation of "Thus Always" ( http://archiveofourown.org/works/4369727 ) 
Instead of falling into Traverse Town, Sora follows Riku into the wave. 
Sora follows Riku to Maleficent.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> http://archiveofourown.org/works/4369727 

They can’t find him.

The keybearer.

There’s only so long they can stay in Traverse Town, watching the stars blink out, before Donald and Goofy accept there’s more harm than good in staying.

The keybearer won’t be swallowed by darkness: no one with the heart to summon the legendary keyblade would be swallowed by the foolish darkness within a heart… but there are worlds disappearing, and princesses to protect.

If the keybearer arrives in Traverse Town, Leon’s gang will contact them.

Until then, they’re just going to have to go looking instead.

–

…Sora can’t tell if it’s day or night. After one day in the dark castle with Riku, time has lost all meaning. So the heartless are his alarm clock. They scratch at the door in the ‘morning,’ with little sharp claws that leave deep gashes in the wood, and which Sora thought would probably be bad.

So at first he apologized about as fast as he could, once he got over the shock of how _tall_ Maleficent was—( _she had green skin. She was from another world. DID THAT MAKE HER AN ALIEN?_ )—and said he’d fix the door, even though he had _no_ idea how to. 

Maleficent laughed (he was pretty sure it was a laugh) and waved her septre over the door, and all the scratches vanished right in front of them.

Then, she did the same thing over the gashes in his stomach.

Both Sora and Riku were patting up and down his sides for a good five minutes, eyes wide and mouths gaping.

The little heartless guys haven’t scratched him since. She says it was probably an accident. They get a little over-excited sometimes, she says. Smiles. The heartless guys are still kinda hovering at the edges of the halls, and they scurry a little when she does.

Riku ignores them, smacks Sora on the back, and says they know what that’s like.

Sora whines and says, “what d’you mean by _that!_ ” but he knows exactly what Riku means, and his heart swells a little, because even if Kairi’s missing, he’s still got his best friend.

The heartless around them chitter a little more loudly.

Probably they’re embarrassed?

It’s kinda cute.

No joke. They _are_ kinda cute once he gets used to them. But he doesn’t _call_ them cute, because he’s kinda assumed they’re all male (because girls would have little bows on them and wear pink, right??), so he only calls them ‘cool’ out loud, instead of ‘cute,’ so it’s not embarrassing. He’s always gotten embarrassed when Kairi called him cute or his mom ruffled his hair, and he wouldn’t want to do the same to them.

(…he misses his mom. He misses her calling him down to dinner and tucking him into bed when he was little, even though she hasn’t done that in years, now.)

(…he wonders if it’s bad that he thinks about Kairi more.)

(He doesn’t even know when bedtime _is_ anymore.)

–

…

Time doesn’t have any meaning anymore, so in a way, it feels like it’s been forever since they stumbled into Maleficent’s castle. It probably hasn’t been _that_ long.

…still feels like it.

Feels like it’s been months since they’ve seen Kairi, or been home, or seen the beach or the sun. 

Maleficent tries to help. She makes them an artificial sun to put up in their room up in the tower. It’s a big, floating, glowing ball of literal fire, though?

Sora is pretty sure Maleficent has never seen the sun.

He says ‘it’s perfect’ anyway, and just… tries to make the best of it. She tried. That means a lot, honestly, that someone’s trying to make him feel a little more at home.

And, to be fair—as he points out to Riku—no one’s ever made him a fake sun before!

Riku responds by casting a fire spell and lights Sora’s hair on fire.

–

….

The fire spell thing was just a joke.

…it was still a fire spell.

–

That’s the thing, okay.

See.

Sora’s no good at magic.

Sora’s no good at swordfighting anymore, either.

Not since Riku got Soul Eater.

Which!! Is really cool for Riku and all. But.

But..

…

No, it’s really, really cool. It’s beyond cool. It’s _awesome_. It’s freaking magical. Totally out of a fantasy book or something. It’s exactly what they need to help the girls who’ve been falling into these comas.

(Sora never wanted to be part of a fantasy story)

So that’s why Maleficent’s been asking Riku to go out to other worlds and find these girls if he can. The heartless are helping, as much as little shadow dudes can help. They’re not very smart—Sora can’t even get the ones that are about his size to do anything with him except sit in the corner and twitch. Which is. Admittedly pretty creepy!!—so it makes sense that Riku needs to be there to help out in other worlds and make sure they really do find the real Kairi. Because Riku is smart, and strong, and has a cool sword, and can do magic.

(Sora wanted to be a _traveler._ Just. A nice tourist, or something)

So it makes sense that Riku goes out, and Sora stays here, where it’s safe, and he won’t accidentally have his sides ripped open anymore by weird floating tunnels of darkness. They don’t know what’s out there in those other worlds, and Riku’s got a good weapon and knows how to use it, so it makes sense that it’s Riku who goes out, while Sora stays here, and stares at the stone ceiling, and listens to the heartless claw at the door outside.

They don’t even have TV here.

Sora doesn’t even _like_ TV, but it’s what everyone back on the islands did when they didn’t want to be outside.

And there’s… not much outside for him to go to here.

…

He explores it anyway, while Riku’s gone. Until he knows all the nooks and crannies, and has figured out how to climb from one floating rock to another, and has seen all the different colored fish in the tideless tide-pools, and felt the chill of a sunless day sit damp and sticky on his skin.

He never thought he’d grow tired of a upwards-flowing waterfall.

He has been proven wrong before.

Not even bringing along one of the little heartless helps.

They don’t really act like dogs. They don’t investigate anything. They aren’t like people and don’t seem to really care about where they’re going.

They’re not even disinterested.

They just.. kinda go.

…

Sora doesn’t like to be disrespectful to animal(?)s’ natures, but… the heartless are…. Really boring, other than their looks.

They all look about the same. A flying one with wings is always gonna have the same wings and the same goggles and the same clawed feet. A lil belly crawler is always gonna only ever crawl on its belly. None of them have any distinguishing features or personality, and Sora knows, because one time he spent _all day_ with one specific little ant-person heartless, and five minutes into the castle he blinked at the wrong moment. When he opened his eyes, there was another little shadowy dude standing beside _his_ shadowy dude, and for the life of him, Sora and couldn’t tell the difference.

…

There’s probably nothing more lonely than spending a whole day with someone, just to never recognize them again the minute you take your eyes away, he decided.

…

(He never wanted to be a part of a fantasy story. He wanted to _explore_. On a raft. With his _friends_. What if Riku finds something better out there and decides not to come back?)

…

Sora goes down the steps from his room one day, but doesn’t leave the castle.

It takes him half an hour to figure out the teleporter system in the castle, and he’s just about ready to scream in frustration and just _shout_ for Maleficent before he finally finds her, hidden away in a gloomy little room with a cauldron and a crystal ball.

For a minute, he almost wants to ask questions about that, and then he decides he should probably ask his other question first, because he really doesn’t want to forget about it and have to walk all the way back here again.

“Yes?” Maleficent says, looking up only once from her cauldron.

“Uh,” Sora says, because for all the time he spent coming here, he still didn’t figure out how to phrase what he wanted to ask. “Can you give me something to help me fight?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monstro

When they first encounter the heartless, they don’t think much of it at all. They have more important things on their mind.

Like being swallowed by a giant whale!!!

That was very important to think about. As in, thinking about how complete terrible it was. It being a really, really terrible thing was one of the very few things Donald and Goofy could agree on.

They’d tried to fly the gummi ship out again at first, but it was no good. Even if they managed to catch a moment when the monster had its mouth open, it would simply swallow them up again, apparently angry that a meal had escaped.

The last try had almost split their ship in half.

…

So they weren’t really sure what to do. They couldn’t contact their King, they hadn’t found the Key, they couldn’t even tell the castle what had gone wrong…

Would Daisy know what happened to Donald? Or would he just vanish?

Donald screamed until that thought vanished instead. It was very therapeutic. Stupid thought.

Well. He was also screaming because he was frustrated and didn’t want to die inside a fucking whale. But that wasn’t important.

…At the very least, they got used to the stench pretty quickly. Getting up close and personal with a whale’s dental hygiene seemed to be the fastest way to make you lose your sense of smell.

There were old rotten ships and puddles of deep water the color of dead algae, and floating boards recently ripped from bows. They could only assume there was also some rotten food (or rotten people!) inside some of the ships, too, adding to the smell.

They explored the rancid mouth for what felt like a long time, trying hard to not spend too long in the water. The color clung, which was not a particularly good sign. They found a few treasure chests—definite highlight of their impending doom, so far!—and talked to the only other living person they found. An old guy on a boat.

They started with the extremely obvious question of how he ended up inside a whale mouth with his son, a kitten, and a very expressive goldfish.

—like, normally, Goofy and Donald would have probably just assumed the guy lived inside a whale mouth all the time, (different strokes for different worlds and all that) but he seemed kinda upset about it. And also. The assumption some of the smell probably came from creatures that hadn’t found their way to being heartless—

—and then his son ran off into the innards of the whale, which was just terrible judgement on the kids’ part.

And Jiminy was _beside_ himself, and Goofy was looking pretty upset too, and honestly, Donald would’ve probably been sort of upset if his nephews ran off into a whale stomach too, he guessed.

(Past the mouth and down the throat, look out stomach, here we go)

That was when they saw the thing.

At first, Donald had mistaken it for a particularly strong heartless. It was all black and pointed. A little bigger than Donald, a little smaller than Goofy, with claws for fingers and two beady yellow eyes.

So it made sense that they mistook it for a heartless at first. After all, what _else_ could it have been?

But it didn’t move like a heartless. It didn’t _think_ like a heartless. And cheese and crackers, that was _not_ a sentence Donald ever thought he’d think, because heartless _didn’t_ think. Heartless were just overwhelming emotions within a heart—need and greed and desperation—their restraints unlocked and allowed to consume anything in their path. The only thing holding them in line was whoever was summoning them.

(The white-haired human.)

That was it, though.

This thing, whatever it was?

It _thought_.

It didn’t sway mindlessly, but it watched with a certain curiosity.

It paused to swing around on half-dissolved masts and bounce off the walls in what almost looked like play.

It gave the white-haired summoner a high-five as they sent Donald and Goofy skidding into stomach acid, their skin burning as they hollered.

It cradled the little puppet boy carefully in its arms when it kidnapped him. Not slung over a shoulder or dangling by one limb, but cradled against its chest, like a precious doll.

And before it climbed into the portal, it turned to look at them, just pulled out of the stomach acid, their bodies still blistering as Donald failed to shout for ‘cure,’ too busy wanting to hurtle a _fireball_ at its face—

It turned, before it climbed into the portal.

And it waved.

And that was the most horrifying thing of all.


	3. Captain Hook's Found Something

...they cannot find the key. 

Not in Olympus, not in Wonderland, not in Agrabah and not in the belly of the whale. All they find are kidnapped girls, missing children, heartless, and defeat.

...Goofy and Donald come limping back to Traverse Town, singed and chugging ether and potions, groaning and hauling themselves onto Leon’s doorstep, asking  _ any sign of it? _

And Leon always shook his head and closed his eyes.

The key was nowhere to be found, and without it, they were lost. 

\--

Sora doesn’t know how long it’s been since he started going out with Riku and helping, but it’s--nice. Sort of.

Riku’s a little meaner than usual, Sora guesses. He hits a little harder and laughs a little longer than he did at the islands, but Sora guesses that’s just sort of… what’s happening. Things are weird and different now. They’ve never really had someone to not like. 

But there’s these two people. The dog and the duck. And they’re following Riku--and they  _ have been  _ following Riku since before Sora started helping him, apparently--and they keep hurting the heartless. 

Sora gets it. The heartless are scary at first, but they’ve never really meant to hurt him. They’re just like weird animals. Sora doesn’t like when they’re called up to help, because that’s dangerous, so Riku’s stopped doing it (he  _ used to  _ call them sometimes _ ,  _ but after Sora leapt in front of a panicked guy with a really cool sword to protect a Shadow, Riku’s stopped completely) and even if Sora can’t stop Maleficent’s employees from using them, he can reassure them that ‘Heartless won’t be necessary!’ before taking a deep breath, closing his eyes, and feeling his stomach flip over inside of him. 

It’s like being caught in a wave while you’re underwater. A  _ strong  _ wave, dragging your heels up over your head and tugging you from shore. 

To prepare yourself for the undertow, you had to learn how to swim. 

That’s all Maleficent had taught them to do, she said. 

How to swim in the dark. 

…

It was Captain Hook who finally found Kairi, floating somewhere in the places between stars. Maleficent told them where to go without telling them why--just to go to the ship and help the Cap’n out a little. 

“He’s gone kind of a temper,” Riku warned Sora, and Sora laughed, because that just meant a lot of time laughing at angry adults behind their back with his friend. And Maleficent opened up a portal. And Sora followed Riku through. 

On Cap’n Hook’s ship, Riku can’t summon heartless, he can just kinda tell them to leave Sora and him be, and that’s mostly because Maleficent and Hook say it’s okay for Riku to do that--they’ve got some weird instinct, apparently. The heartless. They’ll follow around whoever’s the strongest. Which Sora thinks is  _ cool _ , but also he wants to think he could totally give Hook a run for his money, but--

...well, he doesn’t. Because that’d be? Kind of weird, he guesses. He  _ thinks  _ about how he’d give Hook a run for his money, but he’s never really wanted to act on it. What good would it even do but make things more complicated, right?

They don’t want to cause trouble when Maleficent’s employees are helping them find--

“Kairi!!”

Sora flings himself across the room as soon as he’s fully out of the dark portal, racing to Kairi’s side. Riku’s frozen where he stepped out, eyes wide and mouth still partly open in aborted greeting.

It’s… probably a good thing that the pirates cleared a direct path from the portal to the place where Kairi is resting on a couch, laid out like she’s… 

...Sora stops when he’s knelt at Kairi’s side, halfway to hugging her with his arms raised up and… she doesn’t react. 

His hands lower slowly to his sides, but his eyes never move away. He can feel Riku’s gaze doing the same. 

Finally, Riku speaks. 

“What’s wrong with her?”

Her eyes are open. 

Her eyes are  _ open _ , and she’s still lying down on the couch like she’s asleep, limp and not responding to Sora’s shout or his loud, loud feet, or…

Sora’s never seen anything look like that outside of books and movies, and the fish at the market, hung up by their tails, their eyes still wide and dark and dea--

“She  _ appears  _ to have lost her heart,” Cap’n Hook said, stepping forward and twirling his moustache the same way an old man might stroke his beard to look important. Riku ignores that, too, and finally shoves forward from where the portal’s finally disintegrated, crouching down beside Sora and feeling Kairi for a pulse. His eyes finally look away from her eyes and go down to her chest, searching for a rise and fall of breath. 

...it’s very, very slight. Sora can’t even see it. But he  _ can  _ see Riku’s shoulders sag, and that’s how Sora knows she’s alive. Just that and the terror in his heart that says this is wrong and she  _ can’t  _ be dead because he  _ knows  _ she’s not dead, but--

...But Riku helps to ease that desperate fear. A lot. With just sagging his shoulders and letting out a stiff breath, and then standing and straightening up again to talk to the pirate captain and thank him for helping out, and was this the reason Maleficent sent them here?

He’s so professional about it. So not like the Riku Sora remembers playing with, but--Riku did lifeguard training in school, aside from the regular lessons they had about what to do if you happened to spot someone drowning, and even though the lifeguards had been pretty nice one-on-one, they’d been really strict and professional too, like the coast guard cadets and the for-adult doctors Sora was going to start going to next year, and… 

...maybe that was just something you did when you got older. Got more professional. Maybe Maleficent had been teaching him how to talk to people like that, being like. His mentor. Or something. 

(...Sora spent his time in his room when he wasn’t out with Riku, and that was a lot of time, because they weren’t out  _ that  _ often, really. It didn’t feel like it. They used to be out and about all day, every day, on the islands. They used to have a real sun to tell time with. He didn’t blame Riku for being bored of their room and going to Maleficent’s chambers instead, but Sora just didn’t want to be  _ near  _ Maleficent’s inner rooms. They… gave him the kinda goosebumps he couldn’t really shake.)

...Riku found Kairi’s pulse and found her breath and talked to pirates on professional terms, but Sora just stayed where he was, watching Kairi’s eyes and… maybe because Riku had found out she was alive and confirmed it, he hadn’t closed her eyes. But wouldn’t they dry out if she had to keep staring like this?

...Sora reached forward and his fingers hovered at her eyebrows. 

He pulled his hand away. 

He didn’t want to touch Kairi’s eyes. 

...and closing eyes was what you did to dead people to give them dignity. 

...well Kairi was still alive, so she could be as undignified as she wanted. 

That was final.

\--

Maleficent would bring them ho--back to the castle in a little bit. Open up a portal nearby for them to walk into and head back; until then, they just were supposed to hang around the ship, he guessed. Riku was supposed to check if Hook had found another one of the coma girls. 

(Sora looked at Kairi, still on the couch; he was on watch duty, but had arranged it so Kairi was sitting upright beside him instead of splayed out and scary. Her sitting there vacantly wasn’t actually much less scary.

_ Coma girls _ .

...oh no.)

This one hadn’t already gone  _ into  _ a coma, though, so it was gonna be hard to tell, and he’d have to like. Take time and use magic Maleficent had been teaching him and stuff. 

So Sora was on guard duty on Kairi until then. If he had to get up, there was  _ technically  _ a brig that the pirates could put Kairi in, but a brig was for prisoners, and Sora was absolutely not going to let Kairi be put in a prison cell (what if she  _ did  _ wake up, and it was in a prison cell!?) even if it was the safest place in the ship.

But just as he’d been sitting there for a long time and started deciding that the pirate’s life was… a lot more boring than expected, there was a rumble from above deck, and the thunder of cannon fire. 

He leapt to his feet, racing towards the stairs, and grabbing the first pirate who came stumbling down. 

“Hey! What’s going on?” 

“P-P-P-P-Pan!” the Pirate said, and shoved passed Sora, stumbling down the rest of the steps too fast to be intentional while Sora stared. 

“Pan…?”

One way to find out!

He jumped the rest of the way up out of the hold, sticking his head up to get a look-see before climbing out all the way. 

The top of the deck was in chaos, pirates running back and forth across the boards, firing cannon outwards, then upwards, and then places that in general cannon shouldn’t be fired at all. Heartless were screeching and some of the flying ones were going into nosedives and crashing onto the deck, and above it all, a skinny boy about Sora’s age was hooting and hollering, and flying in the air. 

“ _ Curséd Peter Paaan _ !” Captain Hook bellowed from somewhere up by the wheel, and another heartless came careening down to the deck, its wing split in two and its screeching garbled like radio static as it started to dissolve into smoke. 

That was enough. 

“That’s enough!” Sora leapt out of the hold entirely, flipping out onto the deck. “Captain, call off the heartless, I’ll handle this!” 

He took a deep breath and felt his mouth fill up with cold seawater and the chill trickle down the base of his skull and onto his spine, to the tips of his fingers and down through the bones of his legs. 

And Sora let the darkness in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> skull's playing KH2 for the first time and got me back in the spirit for where I want to take this. And also in the spirit for just.... "please give me kingdom hearts fanfic I beg you" in general. 
> 
> and since I'm not the one playing the game this time, I actually have some energy to write. It's not much, but it's what I've got in me. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

Peter Pan was knocked out of the sky. He landed like a brick, wind knocked out of him and giddy-laughed without air as he tried to slash the dark shadow off his back. The shadow leapt away at that just long enough for Peter to get back on his feet and try to float himself back off the ground--before he was tackled again, an arm wrapping around his midsection and bodyslamming him into the wall of the cabin. He went cross-eyed.

The shadow let go of him again, soundless, and grabbed his foot. His ankle. The very same foot Wendy had once sewn his shadow onto, now in the claws of a very  _ mean  _ and unfair sort of shadow who dragged Peter down the steps and into the depths of the ship before throwing him into another wall. 

_ BAM _ .

Click.

...

Haha. Wow! Peter didn’t know the inside of a ship had so many stars in it! 

...ow. 

\--

Sora could do a lot in his shadowy form, but the more human details of fine muscle control somewhat eluded him. He had to scramble to open his mouth and pour the dark out of his lungs until it’d been drained down to his hands and he could use his fingers again to lock the door he’d thrown Peter Pan behind. 

Then, he stepped back, slapped his cheeks, and shook his head as hard as he could. 

“ _ Hebededebdbebdbebdebede _ !” 

His cheeks flapped back and forth. 

Whew! 

Cool, he could feel his face again. He still spent a few minutes rubbing his cheeks and wiping his nose like he’d just got over a cold, even though his sinuses were clear. 

It took a minute or so before he could hear Riku clattering down the steps behind him, but Sora was almost done rubbing his eyes by that time, and turned and tried to grin at him. 

“Sora! Are you okay? Hook told me that--”

“I'm fine!” Sora said, grinning. Riku was gonna be so  _ surprised. “ _ I captured Pan.”

“--Peter--  _ what.” _

Oh, so often Sora wished he had a camera. Now was one of those times as Riku’s eyes bulged, and Sora just crossed his arms behind his head and smiled innocently. “Yeah, he's in the brig.”

Riku stared at him. Stared at the door Sora stood beside. 

…

“Sora, that's a cleaning closet. The brig’s that way.”

“...shut up!”

Directions were hard, too!

\--

...his transformation always left him tired. More tired than Riku--Maleficent said it was because he was still newer at it and hadn't mastered it yet, but Riku said it was just because he was slow. But unlike with practicing with wooden swords, Sora--

...Sora couldn't force himself to rush into getting better with this. Not that he didn't want to, he just--

He was so--

\-- _ tired.  _

He groaned and Riku nagged him, and they shuffled their way to the captains’ quarters where Sora collapsed into a cushion heap Riku helped assemble. 

“I can just borrow a crew hammock,” Sora whined, and Riku flicked his forehead and said, “you'll fall off,” and added another tasseled red pillow to the pile. 

“‘Meh meh meh meh ‘fall off’ puu puu,” Sora muttered, and Riku shoved him down and smothered him in the nearest cushion until he cried mercy and finally stopped fighting sleep. 

He didn’t remember falling asleep or what he dreamed about, but he woke up to tiny, tiny footsteps. 

“Mmh…?” 

He twisted his head and tried to peel his eyes open after having them shoved against pillows for… he wasn't sure how long. 

You kinda lost your sense of time while traveling through space. 

“Who's there…?” he asked. 

“Criminy!” a tiny voice said. “I didn't even see ya there!”

Sora didn't recognize the voice at all. He rubbed his eyes and tried to peer around Hooks’ room-- it was very red and brown, and really not as interesting as he'd assumed a pirate ship’s inside to be--but even though there was barely anything in the room but a desk, cushions, the bed, and a handful of chests, he didn't spot the voice’s owner. 

“And I don't see you,” he said. “Where…?”

“Down here!” the little voice said. 

And Sora blinked again before finally glancing down at the floor right before where the cushion pile began, and spotted a little green grasshopper wearing a top hat. 

“Name’s Jiminy Cricket!” the ...grasshopper? said. 

“Oh,” he said. “I'm Sora. What are you doing here?”

“Hmm,” the cricket (?) said, tilting his head and putting a gloved hand (??) in his pocket ( _???? _ )

(Despite everything, all the clothed animals Sora had encountered so far had been… more people-sized, like Pete, who was a big cat who shared Sora’s love of boats and promised to give Sora the tour of his life once he was back in his homeworld and had his beloved steamboat and river back from the greatest of evil forces-- _ land developers. _ )

“Well, see,” the cricket said, “I dunno if I should say until you do first, Sora. Isn’t it polite to finish your own introductions first?” 

Oh. Was it? Sora’d never really been taught that kinda stuff, he guessed. He just sort of picked it up from around home, and that one teacher who always told him he had to look at people when speaking to them or else they wouldn’t know who he was talking to, which was a bogus reason.

But… you did the things teachers said, and he guessed it’d be ruder to tell Jiminy to go first anyway after Jiminy’d already told  _ him  _ to go first?

“Um, okay,” Sora said, just… going along with it, he guessed. “Uh. I’m here helping out my friends?”

Jiminy’s eyes lit up. 

“Well Golly, same here!” 

Sora sat up straight on the captain’s bed. “Really? What’s going on?”

Was there trouble?

“I’m lookin’ for a friend of ours,” he said. “She’s somewhere in this ship, but we don’t know where to find her!”

“She’s a girl?” Sora said, frowning, trying to rake his mind across all the people he’d seen on the ship in the last hour or two he’d been awake. All of them had been men, he was pretty sure--and he’d sort of given up figuring out which heartless were boys and girls, so he sure hoped that wasn’t it--so there were only two girls he knew of on the ship, and one of them was on the ottoman around the corner there where Jiminy didn’t seem to notice, but-- “Well, Kairi’s  _ my  _ friend, but I’m pretty sure the other girl is still here, if that’s what you mean?”

“Other girl?” Jiminy said.

“Yeah.” Sora nodded. “Riku came to see if she was gonna fall into a coma or not, but I dunno what they decided.”

“A coma!” Jiminy’s eyes were the size of his little cricket head. “Golly!” 

“I think she’s fine!” Sora said, waving his arms in front of himself quickly, trying to reassure the little bug. “And if she weren’t, me and Riku would take good care of her! Promise!” 

...the cricket deflated a little bit, but nodded. “I see… I don’t suppose you could tell me where she is?” 

“Sure!” Sora said. 

The cricket looked up at him again, blinking and looking surprised, with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. It was a really weird thing to look into a bug’s mouth!

“Well…” Sora continued, crossing his arms. “I don’t know where she is right  _ now _ , but I can ask Riku and he’ll tell me.” 

Jiminy’s slight frown returned. “Are ya sure?” 

Sora nodded, eyebrows raising. “Of course!” 

He grunted, pushing himself off the hammock and stretching. “Besides. I’m done napping anyway. Um…”

He looked down again. 

Standing at his full height--even if it wasn’t Riku or Maleficent’s height--Sora realized once again just how  _ tiny  _ Jiminy was. Especially right next to his shoes… 

“Uh… is it rude if I carry you? I’m a little worried about if I forget to look where I step…”

With a look of relief, Jiminy showed he really  _ was  _ a cricket grasshopper man and bounced halfway up Sora’s body in a single tap-shoed bound, landing first on Sora’s belt, and then up on his shoulder!

“Thanks for the offer,” he said, voice a lot louder when it was up by his ear. Geez, he was even wearing tiny cufflinks! What a fancy bug! No wonder he knew all about manners and stuff. “If it’s fine with you, I’ll settle myself up here?” 

“Yeah, uh--” Sora never thought he’d be the BFG, he always imagined himself as Sophie-- “Just hang on, okay?” 

“Thank you muchly, Sora,” Jiminy said, climbing into Sora’s pj hoodie and making himself comfortable. 

… 

Welp. 

Okay. 

Not like Sora really mentioned how weird life was anymore after Riku got a magic sword and he himself started turning into a magic shadow ninja.

\--

They didn’t really have to wait to find Riku, it turned out. Smee wasn’t too far in the ship from the captain’s quarters where Sora’d been sleeping, and since he knew all kinds of stuff about the ship that Sora and Riku didn’t, he was probably an even better person to ask in a way. 

“Hey, Smee!” he waved. He felt Jiminy moving in his hoodie, but didn’t mind it. 

“Why, Sora!” Smee said, pausing in his swabbing of the… lower deck? Inner deck? “Feeling better?” 

“Yeah, I’m loads better now.” He nodded. “D’you know where they’re keeping the other girl?”

“Wendy?” Oh, was that her name? It was nice! “Why, oh-- she’s in the brig, I believe!”

…

What?

Sora blinked and was a little slower with his hands moving around to ask his next question, because, uh. He had  _ almost thrown a bad guy in the brig?  _ What if she’d been in there!? What if she’d been hurt because he hadn’t noticed in time?

“Why’s she in the brig?” 

…

Smee had to stop and think about it too. “Well--that’s just where the captain put her.” 

Sora rubbed his face and groaned. “I mean… I guess that’s… the place you put people…?” 

He didn’t know.

He’d always thought pirates were pretty cool, but… that didn’t mean he really understood everything? Did they just not have any other like, places to put people? Kairi was doing fine in Hook’s private quarters where she could lie down on the couch and stuff. Though maybe it would’ve creeped Wendy out to be in there with Kairi, he guessed… 

“Okay. Where’s the brig?”

Smee hummed a moment and gave Sora directions, pointing around the ship and telling him which corners to take and such. 

Sora thanked him, taking off with a wave and starting to jog across the creaking ship, over rope and beams and down a couple ladders into the lower sections--past the closet he’d locked Peter Pan in--and down towards the brig.

“This should be it,” he said, coming to the door and glancing over to see if he could spot Jiminy climbing up on his shoulder. Really, he mostly felt it. It was hard to see someone so small so close up! “Um…” 

There was a lock on the door, but he found the keyring hanging on a nail outside, and fiddled with each one until the padlock keeping the beam in place came loose. 

He pushed the door open with a creak. “Hello?” 

It was pretty dark and musty inside--must’ve been being underwater, or not having great ventilation down here. The ight came out of a grate in the ceiling, and there was a mattress or two on the floor to sit on, but not much else inside. Why would there be a mattress but not a hammock…?

But on the far mattress in the dark shadows of the corner was an older girl, definitely older than him and Kairi--maybe Riku’s age or a bit older than even him!--curled up in a blue nightgown. 

Pajama buddies!?

...okay, joking aside, she uh-- she looked pretty upset about the door opening. And Sora tried his best to look apologetic. 

“Oh, uh-- sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you?” 

He wasn’t sure what he might’ve interrupted or anything, but having Jiminy on his shoulder made him acutely aware that he hadn’t exactly knocked before opening the door. 

(...why had it been locked, actually? It was easy to get in, so it couldn’t have been to keep the men out--) 

“What do you want?” she said in an accent that reminded Sora of… of the people in movies who always came to the islands and-- 

Well, it was a kinda threatening accent, honestly. It made his shoulders straighten up and his back jolt stiff. 

“Uh…” he said, suddenly unsure of what to say--

“We’re here ta help ya!”

Jiminy leapt off Sora’s shoulder and onto the floor, bounding towards Wendy. She let out a yelp and scrambled to her feet, and Jiminy quickly waved his hands, trying to calm her. 

“I’m here with Peter!” he said.

What?

“Peter!?” Wendy said, gasping, her fear of Jiminy already gone. She knelt down and let Jiminy climb into the palm of her hand, lifting him up to her sightline. “Where is he?” 

He  _ should  _ be in a closet upstairs--

“With Donald and Goofy upstairs-- c’mon!” Jiminy said, waving his hands. “We gotta get to the gummi ship and get you home!” 

Wait--

Jiminy turned to Sora and--

Sora was frozen in the doorway, and… and it must have shown on his face, the moment he realized why Jiminy hadn’t just asked a pirate for help. 

And Wendy must’ve seen it too, because she set Jiminy in her hair and grabbed her dress, hoisting it above her knees, and threw herself onto Sora, knocking him out of the doorway. 

By the time he’d blinked light back into his eyes and the goose egg from hitting the wall started forming, she was halfway up the stairs, Jiminy’s little hand outstretched from where he clung to her hair, probably calling out directions. 

Sora wobbled a little, getting back on his knees, and then onto his feet--he took hits from Riku way better than that, but he hadn’t thought  _ Wendy  _ would… 

...he’d shake the thought out of his head, but it hurt too much. So he swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut until he could feel his balance coming back to him, and when he opened his eyes again, he gave chase. 

“ _ Hey, wait! _ ”

He took the ladder two rungs at a time, watching Wendy’s sleeping slippers disappear up the stairs just as soon as he reached the top. Up he’d go, too. 

Up the steps, and down a hall, and another ladder, and Sora realized where they were heading--

Hook’s room, where Kairi lay not dead but sleeping. 

Something hot like fire ignited in him. 

He burst up through the trap door before they had even gotten near to the deck--

Wendy stood, hands clasped over her mouth, staring hunched and horrified at the girl slumped over on the couch with her eyes open wide and unseeing, unmoving, un--

“Get away from her!” Sora snarled, leaping half the room to come between Jiminy and Wendy, who hadn’t done anything  _ wrong _ , but-- “You can’t take her!”

Wendy wanted to go, but Kairi was  _ theirs _ \--

And Wendy shrieked, stumbling backwards and turning to race to the door without anymore argument. 

Sora-- 

Sora didn’t chase them any further. 

He spun around himself, leaning over Kairi, making sure that nothing had Happened while he was asleep, while they were alone with her, while Riku didn’t know to keep watch over her, while-- 

Why. Why did he think they would do that? 

He didn’t know. 

But something in him screamed that people who were alone were  _ vulnerable _ , and who knew what someone might do to an empty vessel? Someone who couldn’t defend themselves, someone who wouldn’t even be present to know what was happening… 

He heard a sound from outside. It sounded like engines. Like the planes that would bring in tourists for a few days and then they left as easy as that, from one world to another and could pretend the rest was all fantasy. 

One world to the next, without even really leaving their own… without getting hurt or losing their friends or worrying about getting back… 

Sora-- 

Sora swallowed down the lump in his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. 

Haha. 

He hadn’t realized the goose egg hurt so much… 

… 

When he opened his eyes again, he sniffled in a breath and leaned down to try and pull Kairi onto his back like they used to do as kids. Piggybacks. He could hold her legs and hopefully her weight would keep her arms around his neck while he… while he tried to deal with the ladders. Maybe frontal piggyback would be better for ladders… 

He sniffled again, and hoisted her up, and began a much longer, precarious descent into the ship, which-- which seemed louder, now. 

He could hear the pirates yelling upstairs. Causing a commotion. He could hear things like that. And cannon firing off. He couldn’t smell them, no gunpowder or sulfur except the boxes of the stuff hanging around below deck, but he could feel the ship rumble and vibrate with each release. 

He didn’t go as deep down as the hold. 

He went to a storage closet. Small and cramped, with just mops and cleaning supplies in it. Hadn’t someone been mopping earlier? How could they’ve gotten a mop with…

…

But when he found it, the door to the cleaning closet swung open easily. Like it’d never been locked. 

There were buckets, and mops, and sanding supplies and oil and paint. A few feathers. But no Peter Pan. 

No Peter Pan. 

No… 

“Mm- _ hmph _ .” 

...Sora didn’t stiffen at Riku’s voice the way he had at Wendy’s. He probably should’ve. 

He turned around slowly, eyes heavy and downcast, and Kairi asleep on his back, pressing shut the place where Jiminy had once hidden. 

...He didn’t need to see Riku’s face to guess the expression. His feet were planted wide and his arms were crossed, and that was as high as Sora’s vision needed to go. And there were more feet behind him. Captian Hook’s tall black boots and red cloak, and a few crew members whose striped stockings and buckled boots he didn’t recognize, and the big trunk legs of Large Body Heartless. 

...Riku didn’t say anything else, or Sora didn’t hear him. He just felt Riku grab his shoulder after a minute, just below where Kairi’s arm was draped, but instead of offering a comforting hug or even a squeeze-- 

Riku shoved him backwards so hard Sora fell back, head jerking up in surprise, trying to not let it hit the floor again--

And instead he fell back into something cold. Cold and dark. 

So cold and dark. 

It drew around him like seaweed, wet and itchy, but more invasive than he’d ever dreamed, and it wasn’t his familiar darkness-- it was inside his mouth and pushing down into his stomach, in the marrow of the bones of his legs and filling up the space behind his eyes, up his nose, up his--

Kairi’s body was still warm against his back, and like a buoy, she didn’t let him drown before he fell on the other side, gasping and vomiting, her body falling off and hitting the marble of Maleficent’s entrance hall with a series of wet bumps while Sora wept darkness out of his eye sockets and tried to choke it out of his nose. 

(and he didn’t think about it, because by the time a heartless found him and began to preen against him in comfort, he’d worn himself out so much he couldn’t think at all-- but for a moment, when he’d fallen back and just before he hit the portal, he’d thought Riku’s eyes had been green.)

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally dreamed KH before knowing anything was released and got up this morning cranking this out. it turns out that hype is good for the soul
> 
> Sora only knowing the gender binary kills me as an nb person but he is a young boy with a sheltered conservative upbringing and he Does Not Know
> 
> maybe one day...
> 
> kick his ass, Wendy


	5. Chapter 5

Sora carried Kairi through the lift shop on his own, trudging up the staircases and onto elevators, and finally to their room, heartless scurrying underfoot in the hallway as he trudged forward, tired and easy prey. But the heartless never attacked him anymore. 

...there were two beds in their room; one for him and one for Riku, smushed against the walls of the circular room around the little glowing sun Maleficent had made them. No bed for Kairi, yet, even though one could’ve been magicked into existence he guessed. But they could’ve also supposedly magicked windows into existence or cleaned up another room’s piles of old scrolls and chests, but apparently that wasn’t what magic was used for here. So maybe there wouldn’t be a new bed for Kairi. 

…

He lay Kairi down on his bed, instead, and stole the pillow from Riku’s to climb up beside her, his legs curling up under him as they lay down on top of their quilts and waited in the dusty room for the third part of their hearts to return. 

...it took a few hours. Or maybe it was minutes from Riku’s perspective on Hook’s ship. That’s something new that Sora’d found out--even though time was hard to tell here, it still moved, and sometimes it moved differently from other worlds. 

He wondered how long it’dbeen on the Destiny Islands. Hopefully not too long. And yet all the same-- he couldn’t quite think of his mother, or of Kairi’s dad, or Riku’s grandparents. He was sure they’re waiting for them, but… 

But they wouldn’t have been able to imagine leaving for another world without considering leaving their families behind. And the three of them had all agreed to it in the end. Talked about it in the secret place and nodded to each other with tight lips, bumping their hands together in secret handshakes, promising that they wouldn’t look back. 

It was a lot easier to not look back when you had something to do other than waiting, and missing your regular milk, and regular cereal, and regular seagull eggs with hot salsa and seaweed rolls the vendors sold with seasoned fish and rice.

…

He was still thinking about how much he missed the rice cakes and manjar when Riku pushed the big wooden door in, boots still dripping wet with water and hair stuck together with salt spray. 

Sora blinked up at him from the bed, and then just… pushed himself upright, slumped over and lacking the energy to do much more than stare up at Riku with something like a frown. But at the same time, he was almost too tired to frown. 

At least Riku was looking at him now without frowning back. 

In fact, Riku just stared at him without any expression in particular for a long moment before sighing, kicking the door shut behind him with the heel of his boot, and slumping his shoulders. 

It made it a lot harder to be angry at Riku when he slumped his shoulders like that, even if it was frustrating and meant Riku  _ did  _ still blame him for what happened. 

Sora took a big sigh of his own and rocked back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling while Riku crossed the room and started kicking off his boots at the side of his pillowless bed. 

“I’m s--”

“I’m sor--”

The both stopped mid-word, staring at each other again. 

“...I’m…” Riku started, watching Sora and waiting to be interrupted again. 

Sora blinked at him and shook his head. “Uh. No. You can go first.”

He kinda wiggled his arms in a ‘go on’ gesture, but it was more like a flop. He guessed he’d had kinda a run-in with… politeness today. 

“No, no,” Riku said, shaking his head right back. “I’m listening.”

“Uuugh,” Sora said, flopping forwards. “I don’t wanna.” 

“You can’t wiggle out of this now.” 

Stupid Riku… 

Sora groaned again. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry about messing up I guess?” 

He got the feeling he shouldn’t have let Wendy go, but… “...but Wendy wanted to leave, and her friend was looking for her…” 

And he kinda had a bad feeling about that, but… 

“Those ‘friends’ are the dog and duck who keep messing things up for us,” Riku said, voice snappy. 

Sora wondered if Riku’d gotten thrown overboard. Probably not, but it’d have been funny if he did… 

…

He was probably just thinking about that to avoid the hollow, heavy pit in his stomach. 

“Oh,” he said.

… 

“She wanted to go,” he said again. 

Riku ran his hands through his hair, grimacing.

He got up and started to pace. 

Sora hated how much this felt like being around his mom. He missed his mom he guessed, but the pacing-- 

He felt like a little kid again when she did that, waiting for something to explode, because the little things were what mattered, and Sora was too clumsy for the little things--

But Riku finally stopped and sighed one time more, hand over his eyes and head down so that his hair hid the rest of his face. “I know, Sora.” 

Sora looked up again, watching quietly. Riku wasn’t looking at him, though. When the hand finally dropped away, Riku was watching the doorway to their room with his icy cold eyes. 

“...You ‘know‘?” Sora asked, leaning forward a little, but prepared to wince back. 

“I know the girl wanted to go,” Riku said. “...it’s fine. She wasn’t one that we’re looking for, anyway.” 

…

Sora couldn’t really relax at that. 

“...if she wasn’t, then why was she still in there and her friends had to come get her?” he asked. 

Riku didn’t turn to look at him, he just started pacing again, turning on his ankle and keeping his eyes straight ahead, passing right over Sora’s head as he continued to talk. “Because Maleficent isn’t really helping them.”

Sora felt a knot in his stomach jump up into his throat. It was hard to not jump off the bed right then and there as the creeping worry that’d sat quietly in the back of his mind since that  _ look  _ Wendy’d given him was confirmed. “ _ What! _ ”

“Shh!” Riku stopped just long enough to put a finger to his lips and glare a little. “Don’t be dumb about this, Sora, okay? We can’t let them know we know, or we won’t be able to save everyone, okay?” 

Oh. 

_ OH _ !

Oh, that--

All the fear Sora was carrying disappeared, as if smoke had just been sucked from his lungs. 

“I  _ knew  _ you couldn’t be fooled like that!” he said, beaming. He really did leap off the bed that time, landing beside Riku and holding out his hand for a fist-bump. “So, what’s the plan?”

\-- 

Donald and Goofy helped as Peter Pan returned Wendy to the sister world of ‘London’ beside Neverland. Just like two fires put close enough together could fuse, so could worlds, and this pair of worlds had apparently been neighbors for quite a long time since the barrier between worlds had eroded so much that people could fall between one into the other accidentally. 

Wendy and Peter barely even seemed to know they’d gone between worlds, settling in from one to another on the clocktower ledge with breathless sighs and a few giggles of relief. 

“See? I toldja I’d come an getcha!” Peter said to Wendy with a wink, and Wendy laughed and hugged him once more, grinning. 

“I was ever so relieved to see you,” she said. 

Struggling to land by them on the clocktower, Donald and Goofy had been relieved to see  _ Jiminy  _ on her tangle of hair when she burst up onto the deck without any other help. The royal chronicler had suggested he might be best for sneaking around since he could go under locked doors with his small size, but it was still a dangerous place for a helpless little bug! 

“Those mean ol’ pirates didn’t hurt ya or none, did they?” 

“No, Peter, I’m quite alright, I assure you.” 

Jiminy, still in Wendy’s hair, nodded sharply, standing up from where he’d held on during the flight to freedom. “Indeed! Ms. Darling was very brave.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cricket,” Wendy said, smiling. “You were quite the gallant yourself!”

As Jiminy hopped to the floor, he gave a bow, and Wendy curtsied back, giggling. 

...and then she stopped, lowering her laughing hand from her mouth, and revealing a frown had taken its place as her eyebrows furrowed together. 

“...but who was that boy you were with at first?” 

Donald had finally managed to land with a little less grace than Goofy. For a Duck, he did not fly well. 

“Boy?” he quacked. 

“Ah!” Jiminy said, and pulled out his notebook at the reminder, quick to start recording-- scrawling down information as he wrote and beginning to work out a rudimentary sketch of a human face. “He said his name was Sora. It sounded like he was working with the pirates to keep you captured…” 

Jiminy frowned too and glanced up at Wendy once more. “Didja see him at all before I brought him down?” 

Wendy shook her head, tapping her finger to her chin in thought. “No… there was another boy, however. With white hair.” 

“Wak!” Donald said, already furious.

He’d burnt a lot of tail feathers at that guy’s hand!

Jiminy nodded as Goofy tried to calm Donald down. “I see. I think I know who you’re talkin’ about. But I’ve never seen that other boy before. He didn’t really seem to know what was goin’ on, did he…” 

It was mostly said to himself, but Wendy nodded all the same, and her teeth started to worry at her lip. 

“What about the other girl?” she asked. “On the couch. He jumped in front of her… What was wrong with her?” 

...and Jiminy looked down at the floor and sighed.

“Well,” he said. “She’s already lost her heart, I’m afraid…” 

Wendy let out a little gasp, and that was enough for the night. 

Whether out of comfort or boredom, that was when Peter decided he was tired of no longer being the center of attention, and interrupted their talk.

They wouldn’t get back on topic for the rest of the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> written in one hour at midnight after midterms and a bakesale and a concert when I was rudely and abruptly hit with kingdom hearts emotions once again. unbeta'd.
> 
> fight me squeenix


End file.
